This semester, my globetrotting friend and colleague Tony De Ritis engaged me to sub for his freshman Honors seminar in Comparative Arts on his days out of town. He therefore invited me to attend the first class meeting to meet his students, and the rest, as they say, is a Facebook status update:
(Yes, the same student thought of "working-class" and "yuppiedom" as synonyms. He'll learn otherwise today.)
My post prompted Michael Monroe (read his blog here, and/or follow him on Twitter) to mordantly witty action:
Formulating clues to Michael's grid would've represented the path of less resistance ... but no, I had to follow through on my original impulse, which was to craft a cryptic crossword based on the principal works from the course syllabus.
If you're new to cryptic crosswords, here are solving guidelines posted by Henri Picciotto and Joshua Kosman, who construct the weekly puzzle for The Nation. (Confessions of a Bad Liberal: I subscribe to The Nation principally for the puzzle.)
Without any further ado, here's the puzzle, my very first effort as a constructor. The grid won't win any awards, but it does follow the customary symmetry. Bon appetit!
